Gulag

As in the past, the authorities could grant or withdraw privileges, and exact punishments, usually a term in a punishment cell. They could regulate a prisoner’s living conditions by making minute but critical changes to the prisoner’s daily life, shifting him between ordinary and strict regimes— always, of course, in rigid accord with regulations. As Marchenko wrote, “The differences between these regimes might seem infinitesimal to someone who hasn’t experienced them on his own back, but for a prisoner it is enormous. On normal regime there’s a radio, on strict regime not; on normal regime you get an hour’s exercise a day, on strict regime half an hour, with nothing at all on Sundays.”⁵¹

By the end of the 1970s, the number of food norms had grown from a handful to eighteen, from 1A to 9B, each with a specific number of calories (from 2,200 to 900) and its own selection of foods. Prisoners would be assigned one or another according to minor changes in their behavior. The contents of the lowest food norm, 9B, given to prisoners in the punishment cells, consisted of a small piece of bread, a spoonful of kasha, and soup which theoretically contained 200 grams of potato and 200 grams of cabbage, but often did not.⁵²

Prisoners could also be thrown in punishment cells—the “cooler”—a form of punishment which was ideal, from the authorities’ point of view. It was completely legal, and could not technically be described as torture. Its effects on prisoners were slow and cumulative, but since no one was rushing to complete a road across the tundra, that did not worry the prison authorities. These cells were comparable to anything invented by Stalin’s NKVD. A 1976 document, published by the Moscow Helsinki group, described with great precision the punishment cells of Vladimir prison, of which there were about fifty. The walls of the cells were covered with cement “fur,” bumps, and spikes. The floors were dirty and wet. In one cell, the window had been broken and replaced with newspapers, in others, the windows were blocked with bricks. The only thing to sit on was a cylinder of cement, about 25 centimeters across, ringed with iron. At night, a wooden bunk was brought in, but without sheets or pillows. The prisoner was expected to lie on bare boards and iron. Cells were kept so cold that prisoners found it difficult to sleep, even to lie down. In some cells, the “ventilation” brought in air from the sewers.⁵³

Worst of all, for people accustomed to active lives, was the boredom, described by Yuli Daniel:

Week after week Dissolves in smoke from cigarettes In this curious establishment Everything’s dream or else delirium . . .

In here the light doesn’t go off at night In here the light isn’t too strong by day In here silence, the managing director, Has taken me over.

You can choke with nothing to do, Or beat your head against the wall, Week after week Dissolves in blue smoke...⁵⁴

Punishment-cell terms could last indefinitely. Technically, prisoners could only be confined for fifteen-day periods, but the authorities got around this by putting prisoners in, letting them out for a day, and then throwing them back in again. Marchenko was once kept in a cell for forty-eight days. Each time the fifteen-day limit was reached, his guards let him out for a few minutes—long enough to be read a directive confining him, again, to a punishment cell.⁵⁵ In the camp Perm-35, one prisoner was held for nearly two months before being taken to hospital, while another was held for forty-five days, after refusing to work in any job except his speciality, which was metalworking.⁵⁶

Many of those sent to the cells were being punished for crimes even more insubstantial than that: when the authorities truly wanted to break someone, they deliberately doled out harsh punishments for very minor infractions. In 1973 and 1974, in the Perm camps, two prisoners were deprived of the right to relatives’ visits for “sitting on beds in daytime.” Another was punished because some jam in a parcel he received was found to have been cooked with alcohol as a flavoring. Other prisoners were punished or reprimanded for walking too slowly, or for not wearing socks.⁵⁷